Mass Amateurization

Definition

Mass Amateurization = refers to the process whereby the dichotomy between experts and amateurs is dissolving and creating a new category of professional amateurs, also called Pro-Ams.

Citation

"While music and film producers loudly drag illegal file sharers to court, company executives, government officials and industry lobbies are debating how to regulate the creation and distribution of digital content in an age in which distinctions between those who consume and those who create are disappearing. The rise of the amateur digital content producer - somebody who keeps a blog, mixes his own song or shoots his own video and makes it available online - is creating an almost audible buzz in an industry dominated by behemoths like Apple and Google. The amateurs, facilitated by the rapid diffusion of broadband Internet access, are innovating and setting the tone for the creation and distribution of digital content, whether music, films, television, radio, games, advertising or text. Established media companies that have already seen their business models emasculated by illegal file sharing are nervously watching the rise of the amateur content producers and distributors. These amateurs are changing the media landscape again and in some cases becoming the new entrepreneurs with the hot product that may make what is new today obsolete tomorrow." (http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/05/business/content06.php?rss)

Examples

Weblogs as a result of Mass Amateurization

Weblogs as a process of mass-amateurisation, not mass-professionalistion, at http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html

Clay Shirky: "But the vast majority of weblogs are amateur and will stay amateur, because a medium where someone can publish globally for no cost is ideal for those who do it for the love of the thing. Rather than spawning a million micro-publishing empires, weblogs are becoming a vast and diffuse cocktail party, where most address not "the masses" but a small circle of readers, usually friends and colleagues. This is mass amateurization, and it points to a world where participating in the conversation is its own reward."

Citizen Engineers

"Before, only the rich had access to tools and so only the rich were professionals, and the rest were amateurs," says Noah Glass, the co-founder of Odeo, which offers a free service for making, hosting, and distributing podcasts. "But now, as the creation tools have become easier to use and more freely distributed through open source, through the Internet, through awareness, more people have more access to more tools, so the whole amateur-professional dichotomy is dissolving." Citizen engineers are taking this even further, trying their hand not just in the digital world but in the physical world too. Much as eBay transformed distribution, they’re redefining design and manufacture. The infrastructure is there: Yahoo Groups make it easier for people to trade ideas and learn quickly; free or cheap computer-aided-design (CAD) programs allow users to cobble together blueprints; and inexpensive manufacturing in China allows the idea to go from file to factory. There are even websites like Alibaba.com that will help these small-timers find Chinese factories eager for their work." (http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1061773,00.html?)

Report: The Pro-Am Economy

The Pro-Am report from Demos:

URL = http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/proameconomy

"From astronomy to activism, from surfing to saving lives, Pro-Ams - people pursuing amateur activities to professional standards - are an increasingly important part of our society and economy.

For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory, it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations.

The 20th century witnessed the rise of professionals in medicine, science, education, and politics. In one field after another, amateurs and their ramshackle organisations were driven out by people who knew what they were doing and had certificates to prove it. The Pro-Am Revolution argues this historic shift is reversing. We're witnessing the flowering of Pro-Am, bottom-up self-organisation and the crude, all or nothing, categories of professional or amateur will need to be rethought.

Based on in-depth interviews with a diverse range of Pro-Ams and containing new data about the extent of Pro-Am activity in the UK, this report proposes new policies to support and encourage valuable Pro-Am activity." (http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/proameconomy)

Key Books to Read

Book 1: Erik von Hippel. Democratizing Innovation. MIT Press, 2005

The classic on how users are increasingly innovating for themselves.

Book2: Henry William Chesbrough. Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Harvard Business School Press, 2003

Shows why corporate labs are increasingly inadequate, with case studies of companies having adopted open innovation processes.

More Information

Charles Leadbeater in We Think, has a section on the Pro-Am movement, at http://wethink.wikia.com/wiki/Chapter_7_part_2